Mysterious wooden box with human bones dug up near Arizona ghost town, cops say
A broken wooden box with human bones was uncovered near an Arizona ghost town, deputies said.
A tractor driver was grading the remote high desert area Aug. 18 near Cleator, the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
The driver then discovered “splintered remains of a wooden box” and human bones, deputies said.
Authorities and the medical examiner responded to the area initially thinking they would be investigating a crime scene, the sheriff’s office said.
But that wasn’t the case.
The human bones looked more than 50 years old, deputies said. And there appeared to be broken huckles among the wooden pieces, which are casket handles.
When deputies realized “the clues weren’t pointing to a recent tragedy,” they called the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott.
“For now, the person’s identity in the simple wooden box remains a mystery. But maybe the team of historians and forensic experts can turn back the clock, giving a name to the bones, solving a riddle buried by the desert,” deputies said in the Facebook post.
Cleator is a historic mining community at the foothills of the Bradshaw Mountains, about a 70-mile drive north from Phoenix.
Visitors can stop at the James P. Cleator General Store or the Cleator Bar & Yacht Club.
The area was established in 1884 as a gold mining site. And James Cleator fully owned the town by 1915, until the family sold it in 2022, according to Arizona’s Family.
This story was originally published August 25, 2025 at 6:17 PM with the headline "Mysterious wooden box with human bones dug up near Arizona ghost town, cops say."
